


The Forest for the Trees

by alloutforthewar



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-07
Updated: 2016-02-07
Packaged: 2018-05-18 18:55:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5939568
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alloutforthewar/pseuds/alloutforthewar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Enough. Enough, already.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Forest for the Trees

**Author's Note:**

> Written for @leiascully's XF Writing Challenge, prompt: touch. Set post cancer arc and pre Millennium.

Scully ran behind him, picking her way over logs and around shrubs, leaving the flashing lights and yellow ticker tape of the crime scene behind them. She had no idea what he thought he was doing; one minute he’d been staring at the corpse in the shallow creek bed and the next he was haring off like he’d just remembered he had a UFO to catch. Not entirely unimaginable, she thought wryly, dodging around a copse of trees. His coat was flapping out behind him as he stumbled over a fallen branch, nearly falling himself before grabbing onto a large pine.

“Mulder, stop!” she pleaded again, and something in her voice must have resonated with him, because this time he did, head bowed, panting into the undergrowth with one hand still on the coarse bark of the tree.

Scully stopped too, several feet away from him, and watched as he caught his breath, as the rise and fall of his shoulders started to return to normal. She tentatively stepped towards him, suddenly aware of their isolation in this section of the forest, that he had lead them away from the teams of investigators.

“Mulder.” Her voice soft, she placed a tentative hand on his forearm. He flinched. Gasping, Scully withdrew her hand as though she’d been scalded, retreating back into her shell, confused and slightly hurt.

“I’m sorry,” he mumbled, running his hand down his face, slumping against the tree. “Sorry, Scully.”

Her brow furrowed as she watched him, watched the colour drain from his face, perspiration beading on his brow.

“Mulder, what for? What is it?”

She reached out again but her hand hovered mere inches from his coat, as though a magnetic field was rendering her unable to close the final distance. They were like magnets, she mused, watching his laboured breathing. They were inseparable, held together by outside forces with no discernible distance between them to outside observers. And yet, she thought bitterly.  
In all the ways that really counted, there was this tiny sliver of force field that held them apart, that stopped them closing the final distance when they both really needed one another. They rotated around and around, pushing and pulling, an endless dance of give or take, two solitary beings unable to connect. They repelled each other just as surely as they needed each other to be whole.

She became aware that his mouth was moving, that he was speaking.

“What did you say?” she murmured. He sighed, world weary.

“I said I froze, Scully. I saw you in that creek. I don’t know.” He groaned slightly and dropped his hands to his knees, doubled over, drawing great lungfuls of air. Scully blinked, her hand still suspended compulsively near his body, and she felt a sudden wave of hot nausea engulf her. 

Enough. Enough, already.

Clumsily, she stepped forward until his bowed head butted her stomach. She was aware of him stiffening slightly, their unspoken rule of distance broken, but she persisted, placing a hand on the back of his head and another on his shoulder. Her nails scraped his scalp slightly as she ran her fingers through his hair, her other hand drawing aimless shapes across his back.

“I’m here, Mulder,” she said. “I’m with you.”

Several moments passed before she felt him take a deep breath, and then an arm was slung around her lower back, his fist grasping her coat as he pulled her closer to him, closer, as close as he could.


End file.
